Imagine being 9 again…

And your grammar teacher carries with him a thick splintered stick–worn with the beatings he’d given your classmates just minutes before.

Fear pulses through your veins.

He asks a question.

And every time he turns to your general direction, you fear you’ll be called on to answer. Your instincts tell you that the next brutal whack is going to be painfully cast into your little soft hand.

Such is my recollection of grammar class.

My teacher was from hell. He had a raging temper. Often breaking sticks on the backs and hands of children. From those who didn’t do homework, to those who gave the wrong answer when quized on some rule we just learned.

What angered him most was when one of us forgot to pack the grammar textbook into our heavy school bag. With six periods every day, each with its own exercise and textbook, it was often easy to forget.

Every night, my poor mother packed my bag for me to match the next day’s scheduele.

But that didn’t save me from a beating at the hands of this crazed adult.

He became increasingly ingenious at coming up with ways to hurt us. Sometimes he’d beat the back of our hands, on the knuckles, with the sharp edge of a ruler.

Once, when he left the room for a few moments to pee, his class snitch (otherwise known as the class president) wrote the names of other children who spoke while he was away. I happened to sneeze. And my name made the list.

we were really scared of our teacher who liked to beat up little boys

On his return, the teacher called out the names of the “naughty” children. And one by one…

he squeezed a pen with sharp ridges between their fingers, only stopping when they cried.

When my turn came, I walked to the front with a sense of dread. I vowed not to cry. He took my little hand and squeezed my fingers against the pen’s ridges. I bravely held my tears inside me.

He continued to squeeze until my face turned red. But I held on and refused to cry.

Enraged by my obstinance, he thrust my hand into the desk with force. And laughed at me. Then announced to the class that I had gone red and was about to cry. I walked back to my desk ashamed. Though God knows why. I should have been smirking at my defiance.

He was an asshole, no shit. We were all scared of him.

Rarely was I punished by him, and yet I always dreaded his class.

Anyway, you’re probably wondering what my childhood’s grammar teacher had to do with my blog’s traffic.

Surely, after all these years, I am not still haunted by him.

Is that the reason I write correctly in my blog posts?

It couldn’t have been. He was my Arabic grammar teacher, not English.

When I began this very blog, earlier in the year, I knew that building traffic required one key thing. From my experience with video and article marketing, traffic depends heavily on how well I included related, industry-specific phrases in my posts.

It is this language that the search engines can read. It is the words included in your titles, the text of your posts, articles, and video descriptions that would be ranked in the search engines. They are the same (and similar) words people will search when looking for education about network marketing.

And since you couldn’t possibly think of all the language or create it all, it has to be dynamic and user-generated.

It has to be included in the comments and responses people leave behind.

If I could somehow encourage a set of readers to leave responses, I would in turn be able to grow my search rankings, traffic, and readership.

I’d done this successfully already with video and articles.

But what is the secret to getting interaction on a large scale with your content? Any content, be it video, article, or blog.

It was another average school day, at age 9, in my over-priced private school in Saudia Arabia. It was grammar class, again.

And once more, I was sitting at my desk silently and fearfully.

The asshole teacher asked a question of the class.

What the question was, I honestly don’t remember. But it was one of those problems that demanded one response or the other.

“Is this the object or the subject of the verb?” or something like that, he asked.

No volunteers. Not surprising. As if anyone wanted to be wrong with this armed and volatile bomb of a teacher in their proximity.

So he picks a…victim–i mean, a student. Seemingly at random. He asks him to answer.

The poor child, gave what he believed to be the correct answer: “The subject, sir?”

“How about you?” demands the teacher impatiently of another student behind him. “What do you think?”

“Umm….the object?” he responded hesitantly.

“Stand up!”

says the teacher.

Next, he moved to the child behind him and asked again. “Subject or object?”

“The object.”

This child answered with a little more confidence.

After all, he agreed with our seated classmate ahead of him.

The teacher moved down the class switfly. Each child following their cue. Each being left to sit. Once in a while, someone would break the pattern, but they mostly agreed with the seated child.

As my turn drew nearer, I was torn.

I didn’t agree with the seated children. I guessed if I gave the answer in my head, I’m as likely as the first kid to be asked to stand.

According to my training with my father, who as you know is a linguist, the correct answer should have been the Subject. I knew the full reasoning behind it too and wondered if I would be given a chance to explain my answer should I be punished for an incorrect response.

Should I give what I truly believed in my heart and soul was the correct answer? Should I risk being one of the odd few standing?

I had to make a decision. It was my turn.

“It’s the subject, sir.”

All the while, inside, I hoped against hope that by some weird and twisted luck I would be the exception and get to remain seated with the majority who gave the other answer.

Such was my primal instinct to be included.

No such luck.

“Stand up!” He said angrily.

I was immediately filled with regret. I began to doubt I made the right choice.

Once everyone in the class gave their response, there was a handful of us standing. My legs trembled in fear. As I knew the inevitable punishment was about to be dished to a group of us.

But in that inner struggle of mine was a lesson, about human nature, that burns in my memory.

Now, if you can see where this is going, then good on you, you’re a smart cookie

What does this insight into human nature teach us?

How can it help you increase the interaction people have with your content?

And how does it grow the search engine traffic your videos and articles receive?

Simply put, it’s that humans want to feel included. They don’t want to be outcast by being different or being wrong.

But an opinion voiced first is not necessarily the correct way to feel about something. It’s only a testament to the braveness of the individual who dares to say what they really believe.

A funny thing happens when someone does that…

They immediately acquire a leadership quality. Bravery. And it begs followers.

Most people are afraid to take a stand one way or the other. As soon as they see a brave individual or a large group of people following one, they follow too. Surely, you’ve heard the saying

“strength in numbers”

Leaders are brave. The mob just follow and agree with the mob.

The earliest group of opinion-givers are the ones who steer the rest.

Your article or video are a representation of your opinion. It is an expression of leadership. It is your honest and possibly controversial, possibly wrong opinion.

With your articles, you already know that no one can be FORCED to respond or comment.

Yet, voicing your opinion you are displaying braveness that others envy and admire.

By providing the content, you are the child who dares to answer first. A self-appointed leader, brave, because you voluntarily take a stand without following.

But people will not necessarily follow you.

They have only one source of feedback–your expression. They may not trust you. What about the alternative?

Most people will not follow the leader. They actually follow the herd. So you don’t want to JUST be a leader. You have to create a herd or a following.

Once you get that first comment agreeing with you, the herd will create itself.

As more people arrive on your page to view your opinion, they will also see a number of people who agree with you. So will they.

They will feel reinforced by joining the herd, because we believe that being included is less painful than making a mistake.

Social proof. That’s what it’s called in marketing, when a majority makes one choice against another.

People who are unsure will refuse to say anything out of fear of being outcast. They may wait to see what others say first.

And this is why, often your articles and videos go uncommented for a long time. There are no comments to follow. The act of being first to comment is intimidating in itself.

Even here, in this very post, when you leave a comment (whether in agreement or disagreement), you’re helping steer the herd. In a sense there is a form of bravery and leadership in it. On the other hand, hundreds if not thousands of others will read this post but not respond because they have not yet formed an opinion.

Now there is no shame in this.

As you saw in my story, even I was tempted by my human nature to go against my belief and join the herd. I even observed to see which way I should answer. Everyone does it to an extent. It’s a primal instinct, no matter how we try to deny it.

Speaking with authority and conviction challenges your readers and viewers. They fear being wrong. And only those who strongly oppose you will.

Knowing this about your fellow humans though, is powerful.

You might have guessed by now what the right answer to my teacher’s question was…

Once he was done asking everyone in the class, he announced with a smirk, “All of you sitting got it wrong. Put your hands out and prepare to be beaten!”

I breathed a sigh of relief and saw looks of horror on the faces of those seated. Then I flinched as they were beaten and bursting into tears. He rained down on their hands and arms with his stick.

What a sadistic prick!

Sadistic as he was, he was testing us. He knew that only those completely convinced of their answer will give the correct one. He was separating the fickle from the real.

That day, in my grammar classroom, the herd was slaughtered. And it was a lesson, I never forgot.

I’m coming to US and Ayeee…gonna do a Borat!

Kidding. But I’m heading out tomorrow so I thought I’d leave you with something i’ve been thinking about lately.

My brother and I have a pretty strange upbringing. We grew up in different countries and each speak at least two languages. Many of you will not know this–but in addition to speaking English and Arabic, I spoke French and Japanese for three years in school.

I even took a Maori class, the language of the natives of New Zealand. I can’t fairly claim I can SPEAK maori because I had a really easy going teacher. So we often played around in class and brought cheat notes into exams.

I remember we had to learn the names of the 7 canoes that brought the first Maori to New Zealand and memorise where they landed. Since I have terrible memory, I photocopied the map really small and used it in the exam. Naughty me!

This isn’t how I usually conducted myself in school. But I didn’t think it was so important to learn another language back then.

Anyway, like I said, I had an interesting upbringing and a coloured life.

I boarded a plane at the age of 6 months when I first left Kansas and went to join my mother in Amman. My father who was studying in the states became a translator for the US embassy in Saudi Arabia had us join him just two years later in Taif.

Soon after, we migrated to New Zealand.

Discovering New Zealand was an experience in itself. Dad had seen ads on television for Anchor milk and learned that there was this tiny country in the pacific which was nuclear free. That got his attention and he decided that we’ll visit and see if we like living there.

I didn’t speak any English and learned it in school that year.

One time in school, the teacher asked me to draw a “piktcha” (picture with a New Zealand accent) and for the life of me I didn’t know what it meant. I tried to ask my father but the pronounciation made it impossible for him to figure out what I was asking about. He suggested it was, perhaps, a pitcher…a kind of container. But that wasn’t it, was it?

We traveled a little more back and forth. Between Saudia and New Zealand while we went through migration procedures. During the Gulf war, my father was jailed and we were deported because of a disgruntled student at my father’s university.

My family returned on a more permenant basis to New Zealand and they continued studies for their Masters and PhD degrees.

During that time, we were poor. No shit.

When father completed his doctorate he took a post at the international university in Malaysia and he took my younger sister and me with him for a year. I continued school by correspondence with one of the oldest schools in New Zealand.

My mother remained with the rest of my siblings to finish her PhD defence in Auckland.

The next year, we finally had a decent lifestyle. Both my parents worked at high paying university jobs in Oman. I had my own bedroom and a real bed instead of a matress on the floor. For the first time, we had proper living room furniture and started going on twice-yearly holidays.

I continued an extramural university program at Massey University in Mathematics. And when I turned 19, I returned to New Zealand on my own to finish a second degree in Computer Science.

My masters was completed at the University of Auckland. Each year, while on summer holidays, I’d travel to Thailand and Dubai. My parents lived in neighbouring countries and we’d travel every weekend to see my father in Dubai. When I returned to New Zealand, my pasport would be so stamped with entry and exit visas that the profiler would pick me out at passport control and I’d get searched thoroughly at customs.

It became a fact of life for me.

When I graduated from my Masters, I went on road trips often and worked in a tiny city in the south island of New Zealand on US government contracts.

During that time, I traveled to Australia and Switzerland for academic and commercial conferences.

After that, I moved to Sydney for a PhD where I had many good and bad adventures.

Early this year, I moved to Amman, Jordan permenantly. Here, the concept of working from home is peculiar.

Last weekend my brother and I were out with some friends of his. And we noticed that despite us not being great speakers of Arabic, people gravitate to us.

My brother, was surprised at how easily we attract people. Especially that he seems to get along with some of the strangest characters. He has friends who are from nomadic tribes that he spends hours a day with. And, on the other hand, he has western-educated, half-cast english-speaking friends at university.

When we meet people, they look up to us without any solid reason why.

The reason is obvious, though, isn’t it?

We are well-traveled, educated people with life experience. In every conversation we have, we tell stories and have new information to share that no one ever knew. There’s never a conversation we can’t participate in.

All of my family are avid readers of books.

We read in every topic you can imagine. Reading is vital because it allows you to have experience through others. Particularly if you have no interesting life-experiences of your own.

Last weekend, we met with some new friends at the American Embassy where I’d gone to add visa pages to my stamped-out US passport. Our conversation turned to the economy and real estate investment in the states.

Now, since I don’t live in the US, I should have no idea about the economy or any clue about real estate investment. But I still managed to engage in a long discussion on the topic.

All because we read and associate with others who relate their diverse experiences.

This in turn allows us to contribute new value in every conversation. And this is what attracts others to us. 

Otherwise, we’d be rather dull people. We don’t party. We don’t drink. We don’t go to clubs. And I can’t tell a joke without forgetting the punch-line.

Yet, we have something of value to share in each new meeting.

Having an attractive personality for selling is all about exactly this. Adding value to the lives of others. It could be as simple as making others laugh. Or as complex as a stimulating conversation about politics and investment.

You too have your own stories and experiences to share. And even if you live a rather colourless life in some small town you’ve never left, then open your mind and fill it with reading.

They line the entire wall. All across that side.

The shelves are stacked so heavy that they sag in the center from years of strain.

Mostly, in the study, they’re just highschool and university textbooks. Endless references and software manuals. Dictionaries, historical books, calculus, statistics, and every programming language under the sun. A quick glance will leave you confused and baffled.

I don’t think you could tell if I’d studied to be a computer scientist or a philosopher. That’s how vast the selection of books in my study is.

The wall of my study is lined with books

And don’t you dare believe for a moment that’s all.

In the television room is another tremendous library of shelf-sagging fiction. Here the books are layered on top of one another and the paperbacks are two, sometimes three, rows to a shelf.

Every word of every single story…digested.

On those shelves is a chronicle of the reading material that fills my head. From the day I first read a Charles Dickens novel until now.

That’s not all. Shelved in my bedroom closet, strewn in hallway cabinets, and stuffed into boxes in the storage room are enough books to fill a public library. Such is my love of knowledge that some were shipped from country to country and with all the space of my home, there isn’t room to display them all.

At the back of all of these books, I find both incredible and horrible marketing.

Every time I brought a new book into my library, I had turned it over in the shop to read its back cover. I always read the blurb. That back-cover is a mini-sales letter. And what it said there made me either want the book or return it where it came from.

The back cover is the second place most people read after the title. It has a summary of what the book is about, a teaser, and a couple of reviews.

Just like in a sales letter, reviews are testimonials from recognized experts: “Riveting story-line packed with action and suspense”, for example, may be quoted by the New York Times.

If the message on the back cover of the book is written just right–it alone will cause someone to hang on to the book, and walk to the check-out with their Mastercard in hand, ready to buy.

One of the fiction-shelves in the TV room

Yesterday, my mother sat by one of my fiction shelves. She was over for a one-on-one PPC coaching session with me. I’m helping her market Make-Up CPA offers. Basically, that means she’s brokering traffic for some well-known cosmetics lines.

Our discussion turned to a training “system” recently launched by one of the King Kongs of wholesale traffic. It was recommended to me by one of my students.

I asked mum to read the sales letter and find out if it would be useful for her to invest in.

“I read the whole 30 pages,” she said. “And, believe it or not, I still can’t tell what the stupid thing is!”

Holy pumpkin pie. Seriously. Marketers sometimes frustrate the shit out of me.

Most of their sales letters are so filled with copyrighting tricks aimed at getting you to buy, but not even the smallest indication of what it is exactly you’re buying.

Oh just keep in mind, if you write sales letters, build squeeze pages, post PPC ads, or even film YouTube videos, you’re still selling something.  You might be selling someone on clicking your ad, filling out their email address, or opening your e-mail. Each is a cost people pay in exchange for something they might perceive to be valuable to them.

At the core of marketing is the exchange that’s on offer.

And crucial to selling is being able to properly communicate what it is you’re offering otherwise you sure as hell aren’t getting their click, email, or hard-earned dollars.

Anyway, I wanted to illustrate the point to Mum. So I picked up a random novel from the shelf next to her and I read to her this:

 

Stephen King's "The Tommy-Knockers"

Everything was familiar but everything had changed. The people, his old friend Bobbie even her decrepit, ageing beagle. 

Coming back to the little community had been like walking into a nightmare.

It all looked the same, the house, the furniture, Bobbie herself, the woods out at the back.

But it was in the woods that she had stumbled over the odd, nearly buried object, had felt a peculiar tingle as she knelt down and brushed the soft earth away.

And looking back, that had been the start of the terrible, terrifying transformation of a quiet, unremarkable place into something utterly alien and hideous. A place of unrest and insane powers.

Wow. Not!

I remembered, as I started to read to her, that when I bought this novel, it had taken me a long time to start on it. Yeah, I heard a bunch of positive feedback on it from my friends, but even that wasn’t encouraging enough to embark on the 693 pages of Times Roman size 9 book until I had run out of reading material.

Why would I be in a rush to read it? I had no idea what the book was about. Only that it was a best-selling thriller of some kind, written by a very popular author. The blurb failed to communicate what I would get for the time I would invest in reading it.

From a marketing perspective, this blurb I shared is the equivalent of what are called “blind bullets”. They’re intended to create suspense by conveying a benefit without revealing the information. I’m sure you’ve seen ads with pages and pages of bullets that look like this:

“You’ll discover a secret bidding strategy which will get your ads clicks for mere cents while other advertisers will pay a pound of their flesh for the same keyword.”

Vomit.

It’s so sleazy and hypey. Even though, blind bullets have their place. But if your entire marketing message consists of suspense in this way, you’ll raise the “bullshit alarms” of your readers. There’s no proof or credibility. Especially if the reader already bought 10s of products that made the same claim–how can they be sure that this isn’t a “secret strategy” they already paid for and “discovered”?

Many marketers follow all the techniques to a TEE. They use the right headlines, create mystery and suspense, identify pain, offer solutions, and scatter testimonials throughout–yet, they fail to sell at the most basic level. They just tease.

And teasing just ain’t enough to sell.

On the other hand, an expert communicator will tell you exactly what you’ll get. And give you enough information to decide if this is, in fact, for you or not.

Copy techniques are SPRINKLED in their marketing message. They’re subtle and hard to identify. In an increasingly skeptical marketplace such as internet marketing, being transparent is KING.

I picked up another book from the same shelf. Again, completely at random. And I read to mum this blurb:

 

George Orwell's "Animal Farm"

When the animals take over the farm, they think it is the start of a better life. Their dream is of a world where all animals are equal and all property is shared. 

But soon the pigs take control and one of them, Napoleon, becomes leader of all the animals. One by one the principles of the revolution are abandoned, until the animals have even less freedom than before.

This is a classic of modern English fiction, and is a powerful study of the use and abuse of political power.

Now there’s a winner. I remember becoming engrossed in this novel, when I was 12, on the way home from the bookstore. The blurb communicates the story-line in a few words without giving away the story. It leaves enough suspense in there for its readers to want to unpeel it as they read the novel.

Also, it gives shoppers a chance to decide that this book is NOT for them if a story about an animal revolution with political commentary isn’t their style.

Many marketers take the concept of ‘perception is everything’ too far. They think, that if they can make you FEEL LIKE their product is valuable by calling it “system” or “top secret strategy”, then you will pay. Sure, it’ll work on a few people. But as soon as the smoke clears after they buy and waste their time, when they’re disappointed and annoyed, they’ll never trust you again.

As for my mother, she bought the training product based solely on my students’ recommendation. Not by any merit of its marketing. She discovered that the “system” consisted of a pdf file and an expensive monthly membership for a piece of software that does exactly the same thing as one she owns.

She cancelled her subscription within days.

Such is the state of marketing today. Frankly, I find it unethical.

I’m Grandpa’s favourite. At least, that’s what they say…

The Cancer is taking from his strength every day. And yet, he bends over backwards for me. Every so often, he makes the long, cold hike to my home. He uses a cane as a walking aide.

A loud rattle at my bedroom window wakes me from my sleep.

Being a night-owl, my reversed sleeping hours are unusual. The front-door is on one end of my home and my bedroom all the way on the other. It’s hard to hear anything this far.

Grandpa Going Around the Back

So he comes around to the back. I wake up to his knocking on the window and greet him through the bars. I inquire about his health.

He responds that he missed me.

I invite him inside.

He walks around to the front of the house on the walking stick I got him on my last visit to the USA. Once, he admitted to me that he found the cane I got him to be easier on his hands than the one his son did a few weeks before.

As I see him approach from the corner of the house, I move toward him to embrace him and kiss his cheeks. He smiles. I offer him coffee and cake.

He rarely eats.

Food served by me is an exception he makes. The old man is wrinkled skin and bone–A shadow of his former self.

Amongst the old-timers, they reminisce about his legendary strength. At weddings, a group of them sit around a table talking about the good old days. When you hear them speak, you’d think that there wasn’t a boy he’d not beaten or a fight he’d not won. Elderly women talk of his rugged good looks and remember his dancing, crystal-blue eyes.

I’ve often thought about how I describe my grandfather and how I’d remember him when he’s gone. The painting I’ve drawn here is one example. But my father would say that it’s biased and untrue. He sees his father very differently than I do.

Neither of us is wrong. Our descriptions differ because of something called Re-Framing.

Re-Framing is a way to alter the appearance of information or experiences by changing their context. When you re-frame information, you can help another person experience their actions or view their beliefs from a different perspective.

For example, when a prospect doesn’t show up to a meeting with you and your sponsor, you might say to your sponsor, “Oh no! She’s bailing on me. She doesn’t want to hear our presentation.”

But your sponsor may reply, “What if she had an accident on the way here?”

Although, in both cases, the information doesn’t change (prospect not here), the way your brain views it will cause you to react differently:

On one hand, you might write an angry text message, “You wasted my time! I waited for you and you didn’t have the courtesy to call and cancel!”

And on the other hand, you would make a concerned phone call, “Hello, Claire? Is everything alright?”

How I described my grandfather to you is based on my own experiences with him–as his favourite grandson. Surely, someone else could make him seem frail, old, and annoying.

A relatively new field in Psychology called Neuro-Linguistic Programming (or NLP for short) uses framing and reframing as a way to “program” people’s minds to let go of bad habits or acquire new habits. NLP has recently found many important applications in sales and marketing. Because, it’s nothing more than a way to communicate more effectively.

Smart marketers use re-framing to ignite the desired emotion or belief in their customer. They can make you feel excited about clicking their link, opting in to their marketing funnel, or buying their solution.

A dirty secret of marketing is that you can take the very same information, package it up with two or more frames, and then sell it to the SAME people. And they’ll buy one of each.

For example:

• Mark Joyner in Mind Control Marketing uses the frame: “Military mind control techniques scary as hell like Hitler used on the Nazi.”

• Joe Vitale in Hypnotic Writing uses the frame: “How to write in a way so compelling of buying behaviour that it’s like hypnosis.”

• Frank Kern in Mass Control uses the frame: “Techniques to help you control the masses and influence mass buying behaviour.”

Since the dawn of time, what works in marketing has remained unchanged. The major contribution and success of an author is simply how they deliver their information. You’ll see these examples in every ad, in every religion, in every best-selling story, and in every blockbuster movie. It’s a means we communicate by. It’s how we motivate, affect, and challenge each others’ beliefs.

Did you, by any chance, pick a favourite frame from the above three examples? I know I did

Framing and Re-Framing are important marketing concepts. I use them all the time…Including how I described my grandfather to you earlier. I wanted you to feel a certain way about him…the same way I do, because I adore the man…

In my sun room, he only stays a few minutes. He puffs tobacco with shaking arthritic fingers. Conversation is dry. But I sit with him because I know that means the world.

When he leaves, the aroma of his imported tobacco lingers behind him. His half-drank, overly sweetened coffee sits on the table steaming slightly by the chair he occupied moments before.

Grandfather Relaxing in Front of My Home

I’m fond of him. He’s child-like in his innocence. So sensitive and easily made to cry.

I’ll never forget a few months ago when my father sent me to tell him the bad news. Grand Dad’s sister passed away. I arrived at his door and he opened after my first knock. He held me tight at the door before I could say a word. I assumed the news must have reached him already.

But it hadn’t.

When he learned that she died the previous night he cried and cried. He had a rough life working in his grandfather’s farms. He was orphaned young and his sister was the only mother-figure he had.

My father knows him differently, though. Maybe it’s because to him, Grand Dad is the ruthless man who beat him viciously every day when he was a child. And such is his love for his father, that he still strives for his approval even today.

It’s useless. Grand Dad will never tell him he’s proud.

When my father offers him a cup of coffee, Grand Dad gets mad.

And, now, my father hates the cigarette stink Grand Dad leaves behind.

One Tree Hill, Auckland, New Zealand.

One Tree Hill was a landmark that fascinated me when I was small…

I could see it from my childhood home.

Our house was 30 years old when we moved in. It was made from Rimu tree, and was transferred from another city in the middle of the night on the back of an enormous truck.

When it arrived on our very sloped land at dawn, it was mounted upon thick wooden posts and made to stand level with the slope’s highest point.

Ours was the tallest house in the neighbourhood. And from its strange double-glazed living-room window, I could see across to the other side of the city. There, in the distance stood a single tree waving alongside a dark tower on a “hill”. One Tree Hill.

It was a long time before I finally visited.

The road we drove on wound around what seemed more like a mountain. And as i leaped out of the car, excited, with the wind whipping my hair against my face, I saw my beloved tree and tower in all their glory.

As I came closer to inspect, I noticed two tree stumps in the ground.

“Daddy, this is THREE Tree Hill! Look, two trees next to this were cut. See?”

My father shrugged at where I pointed. No one ever talked about those two tree stumps. I always wondered why.

One day, my teacher assigned us a project to write our own Maori-style myth.

Maori myths had certain distinguishing features: There were man-like-gods for everything. And they were amazing.

There was Maui who caught, beat, and tamed the sun, fished the North Island out of the sea, and tried to conquer death. Then there was my favourite, Tane. He was one of the strongest gods and reigned over the forest. Also, there was Aroha the goddess of love. And earth mother Papa and sky father Rangi who were pushed apart by their children when they grew restless in the darkness between them.

Maori myths were told to children and served as explanations for things their parents didn’t know the answers to back then.

I didn’t know why One Tree Hill had two stumps. So I told this story…

There were two young gods–Tane and Rangi.

They made the forest before Tane created man. Rangi fell in love with another goddess named Aroha and wanted to build her a wooden hut in Tane’s forest. Tane was horrified that Rangi should cut up the trees they had worked hard to create. In a fit of rage, he turned Rangi and Aroha into small seeds. He threw them far away at the top of the highest mountain.

As years past, Rangi and Aroha grew into strong trees and had a small child of their own. Tane was not a forgiving god…and when he found out, he chopped Aroha and her child. But not Rangi. Though he tried, he was unsuccessful because Rangi was one of the original immortal gods.

To an 11 year old, this simplistic story gave an entertaining explanation for the tree stumps. It was a myth for children.

Later, when I grew up I learned that One Tree Hill was at the center of a protest for Maori rights…an angry protestor tried to chop the tree in the middle of the night. Luckily, he was stopped in time.

We’ll come back to the tree a little later. For now, I want to talk about another myth believed by adults…

When the Internet went mainstream, many fortunes were made online. We hear about these lucky people’s stories in the news. Boys were paid 1.6 billion for a little video sharing website called YouTube. A PhD project turned into one of the most recognised names on the internet…Google. College-drop-out turned down a billion dollars for his year-book-like social network…Facebook.

I grew up dreaming of making my fortune online like them. These amazing, intelligent, legends of the Internet were my heroes.

I wasn’t the only dreamer. This stuff became the stuff of myth. Told and spread between adults. There came a time when you didn’t even need to convince anyone that they could get rich quick on the internet. All they had to do was hire a web designer and start an online store-front and woow over-night riches.

Although it’s never been THAT easy to make a lot of money online, until very recently, it was relatively simple. I mean, not so long ago, you could make $15 for 15 minutes of work just by filling out surveys (not any more).

Or you could go to clickbank, commission junction, or amazon and pick the first ready-made product you see with a decent pay-out. You take their sales page and throw together a video or Google ad and drive people directly to the sale.

It’s not like that today.

As more and more people flocked to these internet marketing systems, funded proposals, affiliate programs, and adsense content generators…the internet became saturated with duplicate content. Not long after, a searcher would be faced with millions of results made up of testimonials and reviews that all went to the same sale page, for the same product.

In effect, what is happening now, is that the myth has spread:

“Much money can be made for relatively no effort on the internet!”

And it’s being sold and believed over and over by every opportunist.

While thousands of new people flock to start businesses online using these “simple systems”, what is in effect happening is that thousands of clone businesses are being opened in the very same marketplace.

Their clone businesses sell the same products, to the same prospects, using the same offers, and the same sales pitch. They are in a stale-mate…brutally fighting for the same chunk of market with exactly the same weapons.

The result? Customers are divided and spread very thin between them all. Only a little money (if any) can be made in each clone-business.

One of the winners, in this situation, is the system owner.

Think about it…

All of the myth-inspired “business” owners are spending and risking their own effort, money, and time in the hope of earning commissions. The response they see is minimal–say 1 sale a week. While on the other hand, the system owner is making money on the 1 sale/week over 10,000 affiliates (or system users). That’s 10,000 sales a week with zero extra effort on their part.

Yet, the system owners aren’t the demons in this myth.

They’re just making it easy for people to start. Because they know that most promoters are myth-buyers and they will not stay around to duplicate more than one time. So they make it easy for them to duplicate that once.

On the other hand, the people who DO make the big bucks don’t rely on the system on its own. They’re out there creating a unique experience for customers. They’re making it a point to stand out from the clones. Because they know the myth for what it is–a piece of fiction for children.

They’re out there building a real business on sound, scientific principles. They’re sharpening stronger, better weapons by developing their Unique Selling Proposition (USP). They understand supply and demand. They’re learning marketing skills to beat the clones with.

These are the people who outsource landing page creation, list building, autoresponders, and copy.

As the stories travel and spread, more late-comers will come hoping for a slice of pie. But it’s going to keep thinning and getting harder until the myth is shattered and makes sense no more.

“Make easy money online” will be DEAD!

Just like the tree on One Tree Hill. Sacrificed in a political demonstration for rights. The news was broken a few years ago that after the attack on “Rangi”, my favourite tree was too weak to continue to stand on its own. It became an accident risk. And the decision was made to chop it down.

So much for my myth’s immortal god.

Now the hill has three stumps and a tower. No Tree Hill.

No Tree Hill

I don’t like when people try to recruit me.

I hate when they tell me about their MLM or next-big-thing home business, gazillion dollar, big-shit, opportunity.

Not because I have problems handling their pathetic sales attempts. Actually, that’s the part i like. Gmail has a great spam filter. And when it fails, all I have to do is show it a sample of the message that slipped through the filter and any more like it get taken care of for good. I’m a bit weird like that, because I enjoy looking in my spam folder sometimes. It helps me appreciate all the time i saved with the love of my life, amazing, beautiful, sexy Gmail.

No.

What kills me is lazy people with a lottery mindset. I don’t feel sorry for them! They’re Always looking for shortcuts. They keep holding out, doing fuck-all for YEARS in Network Marketing for that lucky break.

They think, “If I can just (fluke) recruit a strong leader in my downline, I’ll finally start making money.”

And that’s why I hate when they ask me. They are lazy and are unashamed! They think there is a chance that I would come  join them in THEIR downline. Why would I?

Because their opportunity’s income potential is so amazing? If so, then why haven’t they been able to tap into it yet?

Or do they think I believe in the same myths they do?

Is the system or opportunity you buy what determines your success?

Systems and opportunities are lifeless products. They don’t work without pilot or master. Followers not leaders, buy products expecting them to turn them successful.

The marketing system they FOLLOW was created by a marketing LEADER. The reason they shift to a new opportuity that others are flocking to is only because major LEADING recruiters made money in it first.  

HA!

N E W S   F L A S H:

Leaders don’t follow followers.

And that’s what they are. Followers the bunch of ‘em. I can sniff a follower miles away. Ya know, the ones who, in quick succession quote quotables from multiple gurus (including myself)–and they think that it will make an impression on me.

These are the guys who spend all their “business time” faking it. Kinda like how they’re used to doing at their jobs. Expecting promotion without doing anything to earn it. Pretending to work, when they’re really playing solitaire on their PC and uploading photos on Facebook.

It’s miserable. I meet them every day, searching and jumping from one thing to the next. They think, “If I can just find that opportunity/system/product/comp plan/marketing product, that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I’ll finally start making money.”

Yeah? They can keep dreaming. They may as well believe in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy.

What are they 3 years old?

Speaking of childhood–
When I was 5, my neighbour was a lovely old lady. She tried to teach me about Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy (they werent part of my culture and my poor backward parents didn’t tell me fairy tales). Mum once told me a story about a genie and dad gave me a long lecture about how stupid it is to believe such tales.

Anyway, I played along and humoured her–letting old people feel useful is part of my backward culture. I let her write me a note to the Tooth Fairy and put it under my pillow as she asked me to. Keep in mind, I was 5. The idea of a “Fairy” just seemed STUPID.

Well, next morning, I found a coin under my pillow!  Yeah right, tooth fairy my butt. Mum, Who put that under my pillow?

When she wouldn’t tell me, I actually went outside and LOOKED for my tooth under my bedroom window. And I found it in the grass.

Sadly, that pleasant grandmother believed in the grown up’s version of the tooth fairy–the good ole New Zealand LOTTO. She went to a lot of trouble every saturday to buy her ticket. Each week she thought she had the winning numbers. For most of her adult life, she never missed a week.

Last year, she passed away. She never won. Not one cent.

And that’s what happens to those people looking for a fairy to come into their lives and save them from their misery. They mostly don’t win.

And the sad part is, they line the pockets of the few who win by design (not by chance).

As for you, you’re not them. You’re here, I believe in you. Don’t ask me why, but I do cause you have a smart look on your face. You HAVE a choice:

You can keep waiting for that one chance in a million–or a billion! And you may live your whole life broke and die that way.

Or, you can start now, and design your win. Do it manually, learn what the home business millionairs know. Don’t jump from short-cut to short-cut. Don’t quit your job and sell your car and max your credit card to the last cent so you can buy a fairy. Expect to spend 3-5 years in the trenches, master business and marketing skills–Take it as a career not a lottery. Then you’ll at least guarantee that in 3-5 years you’ll be able to travel to a country or two for that luxury holiday you always dreamed of.

I made my choice, paid my dues, and became a master of my business. Join me in my camp.

Everyone else can keep buying lottery tickets.

Hey there!

Last week, Andrea asked an uncomfortable and provactive question in the betternetworker forum.

And I must admit, for a long time, I dodged this particular question whenever anyone else asked. Mainly because I didn’t know the answer. And now I know. So, here’s her question below and my response:

Do people jump from MLM to IM?

by AndreaVahl on 21 Dec 2008 14:41

Does it seem like people who start bringing their MLM business to the internet get pulled into Internet Marketing and affiliate marketing? Is IM easier than MLM? Are people having more success selling an e-book than selling their MLM opportunity? Just some questions I’ve been kicking around and curious what others thought….

To Your Success,    

Andrea Vahl
http://www.bestliquidvitamin.biz
http://www.mlmwebresources.com

AndreaVahl

 

 

Could it be true?

Do network marketers who get online looking for better ways to market their business end up getting sucked into Internet Marketing?

Of course, the answer is YES. But not just because it’s somehow inherintly “easier”.

Below is a copy of my response to Andrea, directly from the forum: